Friday, January 14, 2005

I have to go to hell only 2 days in week this semester. So on the days I don't have to you might think that I sleep till noon. Well I don't. The reason for that is water comes only for an hour in the morning between 6:30 and 7:30 so I am forced to wake up early and finish off the morning duties. I have always been an early riser type so this is not really a problem and for the fast few days I am enjoying it. Why??? u might ask. It's because of the weather. See cool weather in Madras is a rarity like the water so when it does become mildly not hot its a reason to celebrate.

I just love waking up at about 6:30 and taking a few deep breaths letting the cool air through. You can actually feel the air as it passes through cause its cooler than the rest of the body. I love watching the dew on the plants and the cars in the morning. I remember as a kid I just loved walking and sliding on dew laden grass in school, the cricket ball leaving its red colour on the hands, the water trail the ball made while rolling on the grass. But I think the reason I like this time of the year is that it reminds me of Kolkata. I used to go to Kolkata usually at the end of December as a kid. The last time I did this was about 6 or 7 years back. Somehow cool weather always reminds me of those amazing vacations spent as kid with my grand parents and cousin. I could go on about the amazing things that I did in Kolkata in winter but I am getting rather sentimental so I am going to stop.

Another thing that I have been doing reasonably regularly for a few months is listening to 107.1 MHz FM between 7 and 9 in the evening. Its the only time English music is played on radio. (Radio mirchi does play English music on Saturdays after 9:30 something I think but I've never listened to that) I know listening to radio in the age of digital music on the computer and portable devices seems like using pigeon mail in the age of gmail but there is a reason why I like listening to the radio.

It is the randomness and the unpredictability of the radio that I love. One does not know what song is going to come next and more than that if a song that you've thinking of gets played then the feeling is just amazing. A few days back I got into the lift at home and just as i pressed the go up a girl got down the steps and I didn't get to see her face and a song came to my mind. Later when i put on the radio at about 7:30 it was that song that was playing. There have been many more instances where songs I had been thinking of got played.

The guys with the big mp3 collections are probably saying that they can just shuffle to get the randomness and not have to decide what what one wants to hear. But u see computers cannot do random things. The so called random number generation and shuffles are not actually random. It's what the geeks refer to as pseudo random numbers. A computer can only generate pseudo random numbers meaning basically that even though for all practical purposes the numbers seem random they are not really random. Think about it. Generating random numbers is an oxymoron like honest politician. It's what a friend of mine said “If u can generate it then its not random and if its random u can't generate it”.

It's been a while since I blogged last. Since then a tsunami hit and killed over 150000 people. Goach and I went to Singapore for 3 amazing days. This was a prize for a quiz we had won in September. A new year has started. I have been sleeping a lot coz I have nothing better to do. I am supposed to be working on a project to build an automatic text summarizer. Just finished reading Michael Crichton's 'State of Fear'. Good book. Very Crichton in every respect. Finished reading Stallman's biography. Saw Swadesh and The Incredibles. Loved the latter more than the former.

Looking forward to Saarang 2005 (thats if hell doesn't have CAT ( Continuous Assessment Test read the biggest farce after the Anna University Exams) to coincide with Saarang as it usually does. Also looking forward to the Odyssey Quiz 2005. Intel Inside Mental Outside has not qualified for this ever so we're hoping things change this year. Forms are out so if u want to take part come to Odyssey and fill in the form (teams of 3). Should be great fun.